Equity in reward and remuneration- Part 1 

Dear Caroline, I work for a law firm and have been employed with the firm for close to five years. I have steadily worked through the ranks from a legal clerk when I left university to now a legal associate. Our firm has done well over the years, and we have expanded. As a result, we have had to recruit new team members. This is all good; however, over the last year, I have noted that newly recruited staff are being paid considerably high entry salaries, very close to what I am earning, yet, they do not have the same experience. In many cases, I am the one supervising them. This is demotivating.  I want to know how firms should develop a fair and equitable salary structure and how I should raise my grievance. 
Sharon

Hello Sharon, reward and remuneration are always a sensitive topic in any organisation; fairness and equity must be raised and managed carefully.  I should answer in two parts, starting with how a fair reward system should be set up. While it is a given that staff salary information is confidential, it leaks.  Allow me guide you on how you can manage this.

What should happen regardless of the entity is that management or the team charged with managing people issues should have a clear structure of the business that defines the roles, and these roles, in turn, should have job descriptions. Once we have these in place, a job analysis needs to be conducted to assess the value of the job.

When I say value, the assessment looks at the role in terms of what it does, how many positions they are charged with to supervise, the impact on the success of the business, does the role manage a budget, what are the risks to the company if the position holder performs poorly, what are technical and behavioural competency required to deliver the role requirement as well as years of experience. All this information then defines the value.  

The next part of the process is to conduct a benchmarking exercise. The process will require the firm to benchmark its staff salaries against other organisations that they either compete with or with organisations where they “poach from” or where leaving staff go. Since you are a legal firm, many are likely going into corporate organisations.  

This benchmarking exercise will also look at the non-monetary reward aspects that feed into how well your organisation is giving non-monetary rewards such as airtime, data, and work-from-home access, medical cover, etc. The outcome of this will then guide the firm to not only check whether it is rewarding competitively with the external benchmark but also to check that they are paying reasonably within the organisation.

The benefit of a salary survey is that it looks at reward and remuneration in totality, not just what you take home. Next week, we talk about what happens now that you have had an introductory Foundation 101 crash course on how salary structures are developed. 

Caroline Mboijana,
Managing Director, The Leadership Team (U)  [email protected]